Technology

A big vaccine trial halted this week after a participant experienced serious neurological symptoms. It was one of the first known bumps in the road for the highly touted vaccine candidate, which is being developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford. AstraZeneca said Saturday it had resumed phase three trials in the UK only, after receiving confirmation from the UK Medicines Health Regulatory Authority that it was safe to do so. The company said in a blog post it could not reveal any medical information, saying only that the “standard review process triggered a voluntary pause,” adding it was working with health authorities in other countries to determine when other clinical trials may resume. Hitting pause on a promising vaccine candidate may be jarring, especially during a deadly...

Facebook is launching a recruitment drive for poll workers this weekend, putting messages into users’ News Feeds with links to poll worker registration sites in their state. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post announcing the drive that it was part of the company’s larger voting information campaign, which has a goal of helping 4 million people register and vote. “Voting is voice, and in a democracy, it’s the ultimate way we hold our leaders accountable and make sure the country is heading in the direction we want,” Zuckerberg wrote. The social media giant also will join dozens of other companies offering paid time off to employees in the US who work the polls on Election Day, according to Zuckerberg’s post. Voting rights groups have been warning for months that the US could be facing a shor...

Supercell’s mobile games, Clash of Clans and Clash Royale, are massive: together, the pair has been downloaded more than 3 billion times, according to the developer. Now, the Finnish studio is bringing them together with a new Clash animated short, a 12-minute piece called Lost & Crowned. It’s gorgeous and funny but also part of a broader strategy to make the overarching fantasy world something bigger and more enticing. “When it comes to storytelling, we feel it’s important to expand beyond what’s in the games,” says Christina Lee, who oversees story and franchise development at Supercell. This isn’t technically the first animated short set in the Clash of Clans universe. That distinction goes to Clash-A-Rama, a YouTube series penned by a trio of Simpsons writers that debuted back in 2...

Smart home platform Wink is having a widespread outage, just over a month after it implemented a paid subscription plan for most of its previously free features. First reported by Android Police, the outage appears to have started Thursday. Users started getting email notices from the company on Friday apologizing for the outage, and Wink tweeted Friday afternoon that it was aware of an issue, and not under any kind of attack. We are aware of an issue impacting the Wink platform. We just wanted to let you know that we’re still here, and we’re not under attack. Rest assured that we are working diligently to get everyone back online. All updates will continue to be shared at https://t.co/WPpNKlhbQv. — Wink (@TheWinkApp) September 11, 2020 An update at 10:15PM ET Friday said the c...

At Woot, Amazon Prime members can pick up a set of Samsung’s very good Galaxy Buds Plus wireless earbuds for $100. We’ve seen this $50 off discount only once before, back in July, but it’s back again to match the lowest price yet. If you don’t have Prime, your checkout price will be $105, so it’s not too harsh of a penalty. This sale is happening for one day only, so don’t expect it to be available if you’re checking this out on Sunday or beyond. The Galaxy Buds Plus are worth checking out if you value long-lasting battery life, superb sound quality, and solid microphones for placing calls. Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Beats Solo 3 wireless on-ear headphones are down to just $103 at Daily Steals when you use the code VERGESOLO in at checkout. These usually cost somewhere bet...

Motorola has quietly released its new budget phone, the Moto G9 Plus, in Brazil. As leaks previously mentioned, the new smartphone includes a 6.81-inch display screen, a quad-camera setup on the phone’s back, plus a 5,000mAh battery. The Moto G9 Plus is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 730G — the same chip used by Google’s recently released Google Pixel 4A — plus 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. On the front of the screen, the Moto G9’s 6.81-inch screen includes a 1080p display with a 16-megapixel front hole-punch camera located on the screen’s upper-left side. The quad-camera setup on the back includes a 64-megapixel main sensor, an 8-megapixel wide-angle camera, a 2-megapixel macro sensor, and a 2-megapixel depth sensor. No word on when Motorola will release the G9 Plus in other markets ...

Here we are again: it’s that time of year when every company starts announcing and releasing their amaze-o flagship phones, and we like to go just as big when we review them. For our iPhone 11 Pro review last September, we made one of our most ambitious and artistic opening shots ever. So unfortunately, that means we have a brand-new baseline of production quality. Tough for us, good for you! Our Microsoft Surface Duo review came out yesterday, and for obvious reasons, we didn’t have access to our usual set of cool toys, so we had to get creative. The end result was this shot: a composition of a 3D re-creation and practical footage, created in tandem on both sides of America in the space of just a few days. While our iPhone 11 Pro opening shot was all practical, this time, we decided to bl...

A group of Democratic senators is calling on the telecom industry to lift their limits and fees associated with heightened broadband use for students in light of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. In a letter addressed to the CEOs of telecom companies including AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, and T-Mobile Friday, senators like Mark Warner (D-VA), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Ron Wyden (D-OR) requested that the telecoms temporarily suspend data caps, overage fees, and throttling as students across the country begin remote schooling. “We have heard from public schools who express appreciation for internet service options that enable remote learning, but are also concerned with ongoing data limitations and continued lack of service for many households,” the senators wrote. “In many situations, onl...

We already knew that Crysis Remastered would support ray tracing if you had the PC hardware to run it. However, ahead of the release on PC and current-gen consoles, Crytek announced this week that, for the first time, in this console generation, the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X will offer ray-tracing support — because it’ll appear in the current-gen console versions of Crysis Remastered. Crytek’s CryEngine provides software-based ray tracing, allowing current-gen hardware to support the feature. Back in 2019, the game studio showed off the Neon Noir Tech demo, which, according to Crytek, was developed using a modified version of CryEngine 5.5. Software-based ray tracing isn’t remotely new; most recently, Nvidia added the feature to GTX cards in 2019, but the experience was subpar compared to usi...

TikTok star Addison Rae Easterling has been cast as the lead role in a new, gender-swapped version of 1999 teen romantic comedy She’s All That, called He’s All That. Easterling, with over 60 million followers, is the second most popular TikTok user in the world (after Charli D’Amelio), but He’s All That will mark her film debut. The upcoming reboot is being produced by Miramax, Variety reports, which made the original film over 20 years ago, with R. Lee Fleming (the writer of the original) and producers Jennifer Gibgot and Andrew Panay (who also worked on She’s All That). Mark Waters, best known for directing Mean Girls and Freaky Friday and producing 500 Days of Summer, is set to direct. Like the original She’s All That, the remake will draw on George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion, and th...

The Xbox Series S might have leaked earlier this week before being officially unveiled, but Microsoft was hiding it in plain sight months ago. Xbox chief Phil Spencer appeared in multiple interviews in July, ahead of Microsoft’s Xbox games showcase, and he hid an Xbox Series S on the shelves behind him. The official Xbox account revealed the elaborate prank today, and Spencer added that the Xbox Series S appeared in at least three YouTube video interviews during July. While it might sound surprising for an unannounced console to be hidden in videos, Microsoft has a habit of hiding secrets and codes as teasers ahead of its console announcements. Microsoft teased its Xbox One X console with a bunch of videos that hinted at its 6 teraflops of GPU performance ahead of E3 in 2017. The company a...

Google appears to have a new Nest Thermostat in the works, according to new FCC documentation. It could be equipped with Google’s Project Soli radar motion controls, in what would be a first for the company’s home products, as spotted by Droid Life. There’s very little to go by in the current crop of documents, but the new Nest Thermostat (model G4CVZ) does have an interesting addition: not only will it offer 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0, it’ll be equipped with a 60GHz radar transmitter, similar to the one already used by the Pixel 4 for its Motion Sense gesture controls. That’s particularly interesting, given that those Motion Sense features would actually make a lot of sense on a wall-mounted home thermostat. The ability for the thermostat to detect when you’re actually nearby and loo...